


mise en place [The Last Supper]

by NerumiH



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2018-12-19 02:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11887737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerumiH/pseuds/NerumiH
Summary: Let us fête together. Let us dine together. Let us live together. Until Hell itself tires of our greed, and comes to swallow us up.vampires, curses, wild interpretations, oh my– The Last Supper by natsu (Vanan'ice). Kaito/Len.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: NOV 26 2018  
> I didn't do many individual pieces in 2017 but I still consider this one of my strongest works to date, so I thought it deserved a little face-lift. Goodbye, 2k of filler.  
> I still have a fondness for this dramatic baby! After finally rewatching the PV, I wish I'd spent more time on food and gore, but hey, what'cha gonna do.
> 
> NOTE:  
> check out the song on nico or youtube by natsu (SCL project) ! i was really inspired by how beautiful the PV is ;-; !!!  
> i used the upload by peanutsubs to understand the song, run away with my theory, and use some lyrics as dialogue.
> 
> warnings for gore & blood (including a couple instances of...wrist-slashing?). could be good to know how vampires are made for the ending, lol.
> 
> i hope you enjoy and please consider leaving a review <3

_He loves being at the head of the table._

_It’s a grandiose, mahogany thing, ten feet down and high enough that they have to prop him on satin pillows so he can comfortably reach. Two gentlemen are at opposite sides of him; Gakupo at the left, offering him shining platters of candied meats and steaming sauces, smooth sugars and flaking fish. Kaito at his right, refilling his polished goblets of wine, reprimanding him playfully when he reaches for the towering confection of candy-coloured desserts._

_These men don’t need to eat, and all the better for it – if they did, they may have imposed routines, cycled favourites. He hates eating the same thing twice. If they don’t give him what he wants the first time, then it won’t offer satisfaction in the second._

_That’s what he thinks. Angrily. And still he eats. He swallows down a gag with another heaping forkful of seared-garlic liver._

_Gakupo likes music with his meals, so a minor key shivers through the delicate glass of the chandelier. He has a book resting on the table between the peppercorn pork and the brandy heron, and he idly turns the pages. Kaito likes to watch Len._

_Len glances up; Kaito is daintily reaching into the little glass bowl of crisp, powdered-sugar rhubarb._

“ _Hey!”_

_Without a blink, Kaito pops the ruby-red sweet into his mouth and lifts an innocuous eyebrow at Len. Len fights to swallow the cut of steak he’d snapped around; warm juice dribbles down his chin, but he forgets to be civil and proper. He often does. Especially when the masters of the house do things like **that.**_

_“That’s **mine**.”_

_Kaito grins playfully. He shakes out a fresh handkerchief and dabs at Len’s chin. “I’ve gotten you to pause for breath, at least.”_

_For a moment, he can only smell the cloying aromas of sugar and cinnamon and they stir excitedly in his stomach. There’s something new as well. What could it be? Star anise? Licorice, boiled into a basting sauce? Y **es, yes, I’m done, all of this has helped me none, I need more, I need to find – **_

_The corner of his eye catches the platter near Gakupo. The venison rests royal with a king’s cloak of burnished fur, neat cuts slitting up the shank to show him the pink flesh inside, the rosemary garnish, sour cabbage resting beneath like an open flower. There’s what he **really** wants._

_The elk’s proud head._

_It’s garnished with all manner of flora, pooling with fragrant oil, a braid of soft thorns making a royal ruff beneath its juniper-crowned horns._

_Len murmurs, “Don’t sneak away what’s mine.”_

_“He has a ferocity over food like an untrained puppy.” Gakupo shakes his head but he’s smiling._

_Kaito settles back in his seat. “Go on, then. What next?”_

_He points his fork at the elk’s mighty head. It still has eyes._

_Gakupo chuckles. “The meat is sparse on that.”_

_Kaito nods. “It’s only decoration. Try the flank! We special-ordered a new spice from the kingdom across the desert.”_

_“I want **that**.”_

_“Only décor. You wouldn’t eat a painting, would you?”_

_A furrow forms between his brows. “Then why would you…” His throat feels tight. His stomach violently turns. And still he stares into the milky eyes of the elk and his teeth ache. “Why would you show it to me if it wasn’t **for** me?”_

_And Kaito laughs, a sort of laugh that would make Len bristle under normal circumstances, but he’s now fighting to keep his mouth shut and yet there’s nothing he wants more than that head. Knowing the masters, they’d kept the brain inside. The tongue. The soft gums; he runs his tongue against his own, suddenly short of breath, and maybe they’re taunting him because it’s **that, that’s** what he really wants, that’s what will make him stop **hating this –**_

_He gags. The fork clatters to the plate. He throws his hands over his mouth._

_“Ah, he’s gorged himself again.” Gakupo hums into his wine glass as Kaito springs to his feet._

_“The lavatory is all the way up the stairs,” Kaito moans._

_Gakupo shrugs. “Hold him out the window, for all I care. I’m not washing another set of table-dressings.”_

_“Come on, darling…” Kaito tries to make him sit up. Len grips the table, biting his palm, **needing** to keep it all down. Bile burns his teeth. He angrily stomps his foot and this time, Kaito does flinch._

_“Hurry,” Gakupo says, but in that second Len gives a hard swallow, a clean gasp of the musical air, and the feeling is strangled into submission._

_He looks up at Kaito. The man’s blue eyes, glimmering with the strange red cross, are concerned._

_Len snarls. His palms are slick but he grips the fork anew._

_“The_ **_skull, please_ ,** _” he pants, “or I’ll crawl over this table to get it myself.”_

**.**

**.x.**

**.**

It began, as it always seems to, with hunger.

The masters of the house had partaken in the moonlit festivities of a remote village: dancing, hearty rum, music from pan-flutes around a crackling bonfire, strangers welcomed as friends. When dawn bled over the horizon, they’d picked their prey and slipped with them to the shadows.

Gakupo insisted on self-control, but the next night, Kaito tugged Gakupo by the hands into the town after nightfall to dance again, and feed again, and slip away again.

Soon, the village realised that it was time to fear these charming, well-dressed strangers. They set up massive iron-laced crosses. And still, even though they were sad to change the tone of their seductions so cruelly, the strangers took men and women, first in pairs, then in clamouring crowds that they backed into corners of their churches. They left half-drank corpses like scattered petals.

Gakupo understood that feeding merely increases the hunger. The reason is simple. How would demons swallow up the world if they got full after a village or two? They’d find themselves at the neck of a villager and feel sick with overindulgence, but hours later it would be the mind rather than the body that ached for another sip, another kill.

To stop them from hurting themselves, they claimed the town’s most luxurious home, and amused themselves for a few days with cards and books, while the village quaked around them. In those hours they remembered a man whom they often dreamed of – a man who found that overindulgence satisfying and _fun_. In some circles, this made him crass, but they’d seen him wear that gluttony with beauty and dignity.

Gakupo and Kaito were to leave at dusk when they noticed the village erupting into flames around them. The villagers must have set the torches while they were resting, then fled.

“No matter,” Gakupo said. “They’ve done us a favour.” Leading Kaito, he’d scouted through the steady flame, calm as always, to find a safe path.

Kaito dug his heels in the dirt. He was sniffing the smoke with no more ceremony than a hound, but his eyes were honed and thrilled unlike any earthly beast. Gakupo smelled it too. A heart.

“One remains,” Kaito said.

“Don’t be silly. It’s bait to keep us in the city to die. Come.”

“This one is different, this one is meant for – for us.” Kaito had faltered, but the strange quality in his voice made Gakupo’s resolve crumble and his curiosity stir.

Gakupo made him hurry and let him lead. They broke into a half-engulfed building, in which the smell of life hit Gakupo with an enticing urgency. Kaito rushed into the cellar then cried out.

Gakupo’s mind spun with nightmarish images of crucifixes, crossbows, iron-studded stakes, but when he grabbed his dear Kaito around the shoulders, he’d only found a cellar of smoke and a young man shackled to a post.

The flames slowed, surrounding them like the hypnotising dancers of the village. He was blonde and nearly unclothed, white skin decorated with deep slashes that emanated that heavenly smell. He was frantically trying to wrench himself free, tumbling around in the dirt. Pure animal panic.

“Bait. I told you.” Gakupo said, but the sight of this boy – unearthed a deep pain and a naive hope.

Kaito rushed forwards and the boy screamed, but Kaito only ripped the metal shackles apart and scooped him into his arms. He fought for a few moments but Kaito was too strong and was already hurrying from the house with a speed that made the flames look sluggish.

Unharmed, they’d returned home. If it was so easy to destroy evil, it would be a very different world.

Kaito had set the boy in an upstairs room. Gakupo watched from the doorway while Kaito offered him water, cleaned him of ash, helped him into blouses that were far too big. The wet cuts didn’t catch Kaito’s attention for an instant. It was no longer about flesh and blood.

Watching the boy, the memories tossed like in a powerful wind, but Gakupo feared facing them. They gave him a long-lost sense of peace that nearly made him weep right there.

Kaito wouldn’t leave him alone like an over-enthused nursemaid until Gakupo practically dragged him out. They’d met eyes in the hall and Gakupo knew that Kaito sensed the same thing.

“He’s returned to us,” Kaito breathed with amazement. “Like he’d promised.”

“Does he know who we are?”

Kaito’s smile remained stubbornly strong as he shook his head.

**.x.**

The young man only tried to run away a few times, but Gakupo would watch out the manor window as he’d rush through the gardens, duck into the forest with a shaky resolve, then return hours later with unknown demons at his heels before the sun even set.

He’s hardly spoken a word, but Kaito calls him _Len_.

An old name, for a body that was ancient.

Kaito took it upon himself to go to the villages and buy armfuls of dairy, cured meats, and harvests of vegetables, and eagerly invite Gakupo to the basement kitchens to decipher recipes.

“He was a slave, or else a hated son. I can’t imagine his standards are high,” Gakupo says one night as they prepare a meal. The smell of cooked animal meat makes him wrinkle his nose.

“We both know that’s not all he was.” Kaito cheerfully brushes garlic slivers from his hands into a bowl – common misconception. “And besides, I don’t mind spoiling him.”

“I saw the clothes you brought in. I think you _love_ spoiling him.”

Kaito shrugs innocently. But his expressions are transparent: a slight shadow passes behind them like a shadow travelling over the grass. “He’s not eating much.”

“No?”

“Hardly more than water.”

“You can be scared out of an appetite.”

Kaito sighs. “He wants no food from demons because he doesn’t want it to trap him – so he _says_.”

“So you intend to impress him so much that he’ll forget that faerie nonsense?” Gakupo adds the chopped radishes to another bowl. He looks over the ingredients and the haunch browning on the low stone fire. He hasn’t seen a kitchen this decorated since…well.

Kaito waits a beat, then says with a softness, “Come with me to his room tonight, won’t you?”

**.x.**

_“I hope I catch you at a good time. I’ve had it up to here with France, but I’ll send this off before I leave. So imagine me in a hotel suite, the vineyards sprawling out my window. Gakupo will be disappointed at how abysmal my French **still** is._

_I think I’ve gotten too old for the tang of alcohol in blood. I **do** like the French food when I can stomach it– wait til I tell you about all the sorts of butter! What kind of culture focuses on **dairy**!? I can write a damned book about cheese now._

_The theatre challenges that of England. I try to see at least one a night, even if I have to hit another city to get what I want - and when that doesn’t work, I find that I’m pretty influential. I got a local troupe to perform in the park for me. Anything I want. I don’t mind if they haven’t rehearsed it or have to read off a page; I can’t expect too much out of such artists, can I? That’d be just rude._

_I hope you’re doing well. I’ll go to Spain next, if the sun will have me._

_Kin, blood-brethren. I’ll see you again. Be responsible!”_

**.x.**

“Dinner, young master!” Kaito announces. He enters the bedroom, carrying a platter of pheasant that had yielded far too many tossed birds before Kaito seared it to perfection. It’s haloed with bright, crisp vegetables, while Gakupo brings dessert. Small cakes with fluffy cream and sweet glazed strawberries.

The wide-eyed young man is in bed – he’s often there when he isn’t trying to escape. He’d made a strange, mouse-like habit of gathering armloads of books and smuggling them into his room like he’s collecting stakes.

Kaito laughs gently. “I suppose it’s breakfast time to you. You’ll have to change that habit if you want to be comfortable here. Now, sit up.”

He cautiously does, trousers tucked up to his chest. His cheek has a red mark from where he’d been laying on the pillow. It’s so strange - he looks like he did, but a little younger, and infinitely softer. More human.

Kaito perches on the arm of the settee. With great flourish, he presents the platter to the blonde. The smell floods the room, both alluring and suffocating.

His shackles are gone; he rubs the bruising on his wrists. He has that old familiar slender form, but makes it look nearly gawkish. He shakes his head. Kaito frowns theatrically.

“You won’t even try?” Kaito sets the platter on the bed and cuts off a piece of the pheasant, holding it to the young man’s face. “Don’t you feel tired? Ill? If you eat, you’ll feel much better.”

Gakupo joins. “More energy to explore the manor.”

Kaito nods enthusiastically. “And we have horses we teach you to ride, and get you your own if you like. You can have _anything_ you want! If you eat.”

Faced with the food, his eyes are wide and scared, and Gakupo feels a little…sad. If this boy remembered anything, even a _sliver_ of what once was, he wouldn’t refuse them. He’d refuse nothing.Kaito becomes too insistent and presses the fork to the blonde’s mouth. He flinches, leaving a smear of caramelized sauce across his cheek. With an exhausted sigh, Kaito drops the fork to the plate and exclaims, “Why won’t you just _eat?!”_

The young man burrows his face in his arms until only those enormous blue eyes are visible, and they stare emptily past the two vampires. He is so small, so frail, so unwanted – he doesn’t even seem to want this body for himself, the way he’s carelessly wasting it away. Gakupo wonders not for the first time – is this really him?

Is this really their Len?

They are stunned into stillness when the boy murmurs in the softest voice, “Everything is…unpleasant. Everything feels…wrong.”

Kaito lights up. “Can you tell me what you _do_ like?”

His white-blonde eyebrows furrow. He bites his knuckle, not looking at the other men. Those who were once _his_ men. Kaito’s eagerness to serve proves that. The boy says, “I don’t know. Nothing. Everything is unpleasant.” Chews his finger for a few seconds. “Please leave.”

Kaito deflates. He opens a hand to the platter of cakes. “How about dessert, then? That’s against the rules, but anything – “

“ _Leave_ ,” he spits with a surprising venom. “Nothing is good enough.”

Kaito keeps deflating until he’s little more than a tissue-paper version of himself. eases Kaito off the bed by the elbow. “Leave the food. Perhaps he only wants privacy.”

“Of course, yes, he…” Kaito shakes his head. “Of course.”

Gakupo bows to the young man (who has buried his whole face in his arms, perhaps in exhaustion or in shame of snapping so haughtily at deadly vampires) and leads the despondent Kaito down the hall.

Gakupo offers that they do anything but involve themselves with food – perhaps they can brighten up the young master’s spirits by bringing him to a play in the village over. Kaito nods along absently, but his mind is obviously still in the room. To see him so concerned is painful.

With a kind laugh, Gakupo pats Kaito’s shoulder. “Perhaps we’ve only forgotten what humans eat, my good friend.”

Kaito lifts a hand to his mouth. His deep blue eyes are focused on the candle flames that string along the halls like pearls on a necklace.

Kaito murmurs, “Do you doubt it, Gakupo?”

“No.” The fond memories swirl in him like feathers in a breeze. “But I don’t think he remembers.”

“Not all of it, but it’s there, somewhere inside him.” Kaito speaks with a desperate enthusiasm. “I know this because he is _kind_ to us.”

Gakupo smiles sadly. “He is kind out of fear.”

“Perhaps…I could remind him. Coax him into hungering again.”

Urgent, Gakupo grips his shoulder. “Don’t be a fool. That is dangerous.”

“Better to be a fool than a monster.” Kaito shakes his head mournfully. “Have you felt his wrists? His heartbeat wanes.”

“I know, my friend, but he’s…” Gakupo looks back down the dark hall to the door, eerie even to a vampire. “He’s still human. You can’t do this.”

“We are more powerful than him. If things go wrong, we – well, we’ll protect him _and_ ourselves. Once he remembers, he’ll understand.” Kaito is grinning now. There’s no pulling him off this path. “And besides… he’ll have _forever_ to forgive us.”

Gakupo wants to adamantly refuse, but Kaito’s expression is alight with a hope that Gakupo had long forgotten could be lit in him. So he lets go and says, “You will suffer the consequences. But you have a heart that can’t easily be stopped.”

**.x.**

_“The chaos in Spain is incredible. I haven’t seen something like this since – well, I don’t want to date myself, but honestly, the **torture** coming out of this. You know I’m too easily distracted for these things, but I met a couple vampires who let me in on their crypts – oh, sorry, _santuarios _– and now I have a delightful reference point for anyone who dares call **me** tasteless._

_Speaking of taste. The sun is no good for me, but it does wonders to their crops. Can you imagine, **me** , voluntarily choosing salads? Well, believe it!_

_‘Til next time, kin, blood-brethren. How about we say…Italy? Hope England is treating you well.”_

**.x.**

Kaito finds him on the library sofa. The boy can’t help but doze everywhere – firstly, his sleeping schedule is all topsy-turvy from the vampires bugging him all night, and secondly, he has hardly anything in him but bread crusts and water.

He looks simply adorable, curled up like that: he’d drifted off with a book sliding off his lap, nestled into a mountain of satin pillows. Kaito touches his shoulder; his blue eyes open blearily.

Seeing Kaito, he jolts. The vampire gives a little tip of a hat that he doesn’t wear and pulls up a stool. “Good evening!”

He rubs his eyes. Kaito helps arrange pillows around him so he can sit more comfortably.

The boy murmurs, “What is it, Lord Shion...?”

Kaito laughs, the kind of laugh that makes Gakupo embarrassed at the theatre. “ _Lord Shion?_ ‘Kaito’ is fine. Only ‘Kaito.’ Sounds like Gakupo’s influence – or, I’m sorry, _Lord Kamui.”_

He’s moving for his pitcher of water on the nearby table; Kaito nudges it out of reach.

Kaito says, “I’ve asked you for _your_ name. Day after day. And you don’t answer. Here’s a secret: in private, I call you something other than ‘young master.’” It’s not all, but the other titles might add too much pressure to the whole ordeal.

Kaito takes his slender white hand. The bruises would clear faster if he’d just _eat._ “If you don’t give me a name, then I’ll name you.” He so loves freely saying it that it bubbles up in him like champagne: “ _Len_.”

He stares blankly. Hardly alive. Kaito likes to dress him up so much. Roses in his hair, dresses with elegant damasks, shining little shoes that take forever to lace.

Kaito says, “I’d like to show you something. In one of my rooms.” They were once Len’s, after all. “Come along.”

Kaito stands. He tries for the water again. Kaito shoves it with his knee; it nearly overturns.

Kaito leads him up the three flights of stairs to his quarters. He points out the paintings that line the walls, explaining how he’d known the people in them, but he omits the stories that end in death.

These halls are stained with memories of Len’s exuberance. Len liked paintings of himself as well - liked to commission great artists who drew kings, but months would make them boring to him and he’d burn them.

They make it to Kaito’s office. Gakupo thinks it’s dreadfully unorganised and loathes that Kaito was chosen to keep all the important documents, but Kaito loves its enormous window of a wall and silvery-wood shelves. He ushers Len to a table.

He approaches a steel case under the desk, pulls a key from his vest, and pops it open. The letters smell like the pure, wondrous passage of time and the cologne Len wore. He lingers – his fingers drift along the pages, the ink embedded in the paper with far more than his handwriting. His speed, his urgency, his excitement when talking about things he loved.

Kaito lifts them and finds a letter opener at the bottom. An embedded sapphire is carved with a swirling, stately _L.K._

Kaito grips it and closes his eyes. He knows it’s just cold, sharp metal – but he swears something else emanates from it. Something that the boy behind him promised, once upon a time.

This Len, the slave-boy Len, is touching the candelabra with an absent curiosity. What else is there to do around vampires that you fear? He feels a little bad for him. He must think himself lucky to be alive, at least.

He’ll understand soon.

That it’s all fate’s comedic design.

Kaito takes Len’s limp hand and leads him to the sofa; he complacently sits with a little push. Kaito sits beside him.

“You see how weak you are, don’t you?” Kaito asks. He holds the letter opener in his lap.

Len isn’t staring into middle-distance anymore: he’s staring at the blade.

“It’s because you aren’t eating. Why don’t you tell me why?”

Len opens his mouth; it drifts shut again. Kaito absently fiddles with the little object. “Why don’t you eat? Why don’t you make an effort?”

Kaito’s grip fumbles; Len jolts as the knife flashes in the air and he splutters, “If I starve myself, I’ll – I’ll die first, so you won’t kill me.”

“…Kill you?”

Len nods frantically.

Gakupo would laugh and chide Len for such a silly thought. But Kaito just feels sad. He looks at the letter opener and rubs the sapphire with his thumb, saying quietly, “I’m disappointed…but I guess that makes sense. We’re little more than nightmares to humans, aren’t we?”

He looks in Len’s eyes. He nods, more like a twitch.

Kaito has something very important to do. One of the things that Len made him promise.

Maybe not quite in this way, but…

Kaito says, “I never thought of hurting you. Even with those cuts…” He touches the collar of Len’s blouse, where red and brown scabs peek through. “Neither I, nor Gakupo, will ever hurt you. Please don’t think that.”

Len is still as ice; Kaito’s hand moves away.

It hits him all at once: this is so depressing, isn’t it? To have a man he once loved be so afraid of him, be so sick. He just wants him to _need_ something. Have anything to pull him day to day, more than survival, and much more than fear. Hunger and the scent of a thrill pulled Len through centuries.

“You don’t need to worry anymore.” Kaito turns the letter opener so its sharp edge emerges from his fingertips. Len scrambles to his feet; Kaito’s heart splinters as he grabs Len’s wrist and yanks him forwards.

He’s fighting with all he has left in him, a frantic bird with brittle panic. Kaito had planned this moment being beautiful and triumphant. Len will leave this room, hand-in-hand with him, understanding it all, _his_ again.

But it’s just messy and sad. Len is fighting. Kaito exclaims, “Look, I’m not going to hurt _you_!” and lets go long enough to slash his own wrist.

Len freezes. Kaito kicks the letter opener across the floor. He’s drank enough blood from their private stores for the blood to run rich and pulseless from the deep cut. It’s a demon’s black. It drips on his trousers as he offers it to Len.

“Come,” Kaito pleads. “I said I wouldn’t hurt you. I never break my promises. Never.”

Len’s eyes are fixed on the cut; Kaito pulls him til he tumbles into the sofa, seeming about to faint.

He wishes he could explain. He just wanted this to be a reunion, and he could show Gakupo that he’d brought him back. Their Len would finally be with them. Just as he’d dreamed.

Just as he’d promised.

Kaito cradles the back of Len’s head. His eyes, circled in purple bruises, open wide, and the feeblest of kicks strike out at Kaito, but he’s easy enough to pin down. Slender, weak, human. A thumb forces open his dainty jaw. Kaito touches his bleeding wrist to Len’s mouth.

The boy’s mouth.

The _boy_ is the one who is struggling, not the damned spirit inside, but it still hurts.

Kaito presses his wrist harder against his mouth. He doesn’t have a pulse so he has to squeeze his arm and use gravity to urge the blood out; it spills thick and black down Len’s cheeks and chin. He’s not taking any of it. Eyes huge and frantic. Throat pulsing, closing and resisting all of it.

“Eat, won’t you?!” Kaito moans, and tilts the boy’s head back. “Please, _please. Len.”_

The blonde is whining, the sound coming out gurgled and pathetic, but his kicks have slowed, and Kaito tears his wrist away and clamps Len’s mouth shut.

Those blue eyes pin him with icy horror. They hold the fear of a man realising that the demon has caught up to him after a long, horrible chase.

His sire chokes. Suffocates. And swallows.

“There…there, it’s over, my dear,” Kaito sobs, and cradles Len’s head in his hands as he presses their foreheads together, his slight body warm and limp underneath his own. He gently rocks him. It’s as if he’d twisted a knife into his own gut – it’s a terrible thing to do to a human, give them blood tainted by darkness. It’s a terrible thing to do to his master. He’s hurting. Kaito had lied, hadn’t he? He’d said – then, and now, he’d said – _I won’t hurt you._

Len’s warm breath fogs on the blood on Kaito’s wrist.

And despite Kaito’s crying, Len rolls over slightly and a hand with new strength grasps Kaito’s elbow and drags him in.

Kaito watches with amazement as Len seeks the bubbling cut and seals his mouth to it. He doesn’t hesitate: he knows what he wants, what all animal instinct pleads, and he immediately begins to drink.

His little teeth are blunt but still they try to bite; Kaito holds his tongue and grins. Kaito adjusts them so he’s bringing his wrist to Len and the blonde can lay comfortably on his back, calmly writhing between Kaito’s knees like a cat rolling in a patch of sun.

It wasn’t like this the first time. The _real_ first time. It was deep in the neck, Len holding him about the waist, tearing through vein and muscle. He was enthusiastic and wicked – before Kaito could pass out he’d ripped out the column of his throat with his teeth, and it was delirious, but Kaito knew he’d been enamoured, enjoying it, feeling the world fall away before his consciousness did and he awoke much like this Len is now. At the wrist of a vampire, searching for anything to remind him why it was worth it to stay alive.

Len’s hands scratch for purchase in Kaito’s shirt, pulling Kaito to conceal him with his weight. His eagerness is making Kaito’s head spin. Blood is staining all the pillows around his head into a shiny wet onyx. Mesmerized, Kaito traces the movement of Len’s throat as he swallows. The blonde’s heart is racing hard with excitement – a pulse, _finally_ strong, pumps under that white-blue skin.

Kaito can feel the exact shape and sharpness of his teeth in his mouth.

All it would take is one bite.

One sip of this porcelain boy’s ruby blood.

One more cut. One more bruise.

If he could just…

Kaito tugs his arm away. Len may be convincing, but his frail human body is still no match for a vampire’s strength, so he lets go with a soft whimper – a gentle, intimate sound that doesn’t help much as Kaito tries to snap himself out of this thrall.

True humans have no thrall. But Len’s, the old Len’s…it had been all-encompassing, like tumbling into a dream where he chose your fate. You’d walk off a cliff for him. You’d embrace the flames of hell.

Kaito sits up. Len doesn’t move; his whole mouth is coated in blood, the black spilling down his jaw and into his corset, pooling in the delicate curls of his ears. He emits a tired, gentle moan. Eyes shut. Kaito can’t help but swipe the wet blood from his bottom lip, offering it to a warm, lazily searching tongue.

First he’d wanted to bite him, and now he wants to kiss him.

Kaito softly laughs. “My puppet-master, no matter what the form.”

**.**

**.x.**

**.**

_Len sits at his bureau. Glares into his reflection – smiles, frowns. Watching the edges of him change shape. Nothing seems to fit right._

_The emptiness isn’t something he can touch or see, but he can feel it when he’s alone, the air vacant of a sensation, such as the sharp stab of tartness. The gentle caress of herb-and-spice. The thrilling coax of sweetness. When there’s nothing, the emptiness gapes its maw and asks for more._

_It’s looking for something. But he can’t remember what it is._

_He makes them demand different things of the cooks. And he loves all of it – when he’s eating. Each new bite is tries its best to masquerade like the missing piece, and he plays along with them like the prince to all the princesses pretending that they’re Cinderella. But when he swallows and pushes to the next thing, he can see that they’re all wenches._

_He bares his teeth in the mirror._


	2. Chapter 2

_“So, this is wild: my road to Italy was diverted by one of those Spanish vampires I mentioned. Apparently I know too much so I needed a swift reprimand and selection of threats, the least of which involved their adapted torture devices (they get the pick of the litter since the Inquisition has disbanded). I’ve never thought up so many lies and pleads in my **life**._

_Anyhow, I guess I’m a part of a pact now. Completely stupid. I got a neat necklace out of it though, and they have this amazing black pudding on Fridays. Maybe not a complete loss?_

_I bet England is boring. I’m only kidding a little. I’ll stop running around sooner or later and then you’ll be able to write back. Kin, blood-brethren, please do not turn into a brood of torture-obsessed idiots while I’m gone. I’ve had enough!_

_Je t’aime! (I miss French wine. I complained when I wrote about it, but my goodness. I dream of it.)”_

**.x.**

The change is immediate and heartening.

At first it’s in his eating, which is enough of an innocuous thing that Gakupo isn’t suspicious. The first time he’d taken a cautious bite, it had taken Kaito everything to not spring to his feet and praise whatever deity would hear a demon. (He settled for kissing Len on the forehead and nearly upending that blessed plate.)

Next came desserts in the dining room, then full meals, brimming goblets of wine and goat’s milk, appetisers and salads and main courses, and then he demanded for something else to follow all that.

They hired cooks from the nearby village. Len wandered about at odd hours and would find Gakupo or Kaito in their studies and ask to order a cup of this or a plate of that. With it came douses of personality: he was no longer a husk, but a young man that smiled at the manor horses when they nuzzled his hand, and Gakupo got his chance to bring him to plays.

He requested more of that, as well.

He wanted more and more of everything.

Kaito brought him into his study and read him the personal letters that Len had given them nearly a century ago, in hopes of jogging his memory. Len would eat grapes or strawberries and watch him. Dead-eyed. But then he’d request that he and Kaito go to the village to shop, and Kaito would feel slightly better.

One night, Kaito comes in from the gardens with a frothing bouquet of satiny red roses. Gakupo catches him in the hall and leans in to breathe their aroma.

Kaito smiles self-consciously. “They were once his favourite, you remember?”

“Ever the sentimental,” Gakupo says, but there is fondness in his eyes too.

Len’s room looks just his size now; he’s comfortably moved in with a shelf of his favourite books, an enormous pair of glistening armoires, a jewel-hilted blade collection in a glass case and a desk for him to write and draw.

Len is away, so Kaito arranges the flowers in a vase. The original Len – he’d been a tasteful young man, teaching his curious fledglings about things like flora.

“Perhaps it isn’t the most useful of subjects,” Len had said. “But it matters to me, and so I intend to make it matter to you. Things need not always be about survival. They can be reminders on why to live.”

That had struck Kaito at the time. That phrase was like what he’d thought when he was being changed.

Len’s room had been stuffed to the brim because just one of anything wasn’t enough. All sorts, rhododendrons and dahlias and camellias, cradled in a hundred delicately carved vases with images that told the myths of lands he’d passed through before he’d found Kaito and Gakupo. Once, Kaito had visited him for no better reason than loneliness, and Len had emerged from the beautiful chaos of petals like a fairy tale prince. He’d been washing his face; water stuck to his eyelashes and a few drops spattered innocent dark flakes on his vest.

“These flowers – they never seem to die,” Kaito had said, touching the silk of a marigold.

“Neither do we. What does that say about manners of life and death, souled and soulless?” Len drifted to him. Smirked. “I just have someone trim them the instant they wilt, silly.”

Kaito laughed. “Of course – how foolish of me.”

“Not really. You seek imagery in everything. I think it’s nice.” Len stroked up the marigold and caught Kaito’s fingers in his own. He knew his skin is icy-cold, but Len’s were much the same, and so to them it felt like normalcy, a hidden life beneath the skin that others aren’t privy to. Len wound their fingers together and lazily slung his arm over Kaito’s opposite shoulder.

Len dragged Kaito into a dance with no music. He grinned at Kaito in his characteristic rakish, sleepy way. His fangs glinted. Their exact pattern is imprinted in little scars on Kaito’s neck. It’s strange that the hole in his throat healed up fine, but he can still run his fingers over his jugular and feel the little bumps. The last remnant of his useless humanity without Len.

They moved throughout the room made labyrinthine by tables and vases, hidden at every corner in close shadow of the blooms. Silence but for their footfalls. Kaito has learned not to miss breathing, gasping, the shudder of a heartbeat. Len didn’t need these silly decorations – he was so much more than them.

Len also knew the room better than him. He backed Kaito into a corner til he hit an array of tables and his head nestled in a soft pillow of flowers. The smell of roses clouded his head and that time, he did breathe deep, until he could practically taste it.

The cross in Len’s eye shone red. A smirk played at his thin lips as he reached up on tiptoe to exhale cold breath on Kaito’s mouth. Satin surrounded them, and the bite at Kaito’s neck prickled.

Kaito misplaced his grip and suddenly a vase behind him tipped. His reaction was sluggish because of the pure proximity of Len: glass hit glass hit glass, and then the entire corner of roses was crashing to the floor. Len leapt back but the water made his polished shoes slip; they both yelped as they tumbled to the floor, flowers raining down all around them.

Kaito’s knees hit the glass. He gasped, “I’m so sorry – “

But Len was laughing. He was throwing long-stemmed roses off himself so the shower continued on and on around him, a boyish glee on a glass-chiselled face. All the warmth in him shone out.

“If I can’t be a fool around you, then what’s the point in being a sire?” Len exclaimed, hopelessly moving out of the way of the spreading water. His laugh was infectious; Kaito joined him, and they wound together amongst the chaos. Len slipped his way onto Kaito’s lap. Sitting tall, Len wielded a rose and tapped under Kaito’s chin with it, rewarding the obedience of his head tilting up with a kiss.

Kaito could never quite believe when this happens. Len was pushy and exuberant for all his grace, pinning Kaito’s waist with his knees and purring into the deep, sweetened kiss.

Len gasped. Kaito pulled back to find him looking at his hand; the thorns pricked his fingers ‘til blood rises. He didn’t need to breathe to smell _that_ – it wasn’t in the air so much as it was already inside him, stirring excitedly.

Len gave him a mischievous smirk. And pressed the thorns deeper into his fingers until he had enough blood to smear.

Rose toppling from his hand, he offered it out.

Kaito knew he should be patient or at least cautious, but there was no wasting a chance like this. He delicately took Len’s wrist and kissed his palm, the scent flooding his head, then kissed his fingers; the tiny cuts smeared blood across his lips and that lost, dying human demanded more.

Slipping a couple of his fingers into Kaito’s mouth, Len set to roughly kissing the delicate imprints of where he’d first bitten him. Kaito felt him smiling around teeth temptingly sharp, and tried to hold onto that impression as his mind zeroed in on the taste of Len’s blood. It was only tiny droplets; he wouldn’t dare bite for more.

The blood came from anyone he’s fed on, but once it ran through his veins, it was blessed with him. Kaito tastes no difference between man, woman, child – but Len is unmistakeable. Len is infinitum.

His mind betrayed him. The question rose to his lips before he could stop it.

“Len?”

He mumbled into his neck, “Shh. If Gakupo catches us, he’ll be jealous.”

Kaito licked the tang of blood on his lip. Len’s pale fingers curled in his palm, the cuts now bare. He could – he could bite and pretend it was an accident –

“Len, I have a question.”

Len sighed, not unkindly, and plucked his hand from Kaito’s. “Hm?”

“Why did you change us?”

That made Len pull away. Smirking, he rocked back on Kaito’s lap with hands wound behind Kaito’s neck. He happily replied, “Company. Eternity gets lonely. And…” he shrugged, “a curse has decided to haunt me, and the two of you are a good distraction.”

“What do you mean…?”

Len’s teeth glistened in a lazy grin. “Don’t kill the wrong people, my dear. We aren’t the only godless creatures on this wide world.”

“Can we break the curse?”

Len laughed. He fished a rose from the messy floor and toyed with it. “You know how I trim these flowers once they wilt? Think of them like vampires. We all die, but they’re always hidden away among the vampires that survive, so the little ones,” he tapped Kaito’s nose with the rose, “think we’re _all_ infinite. I, too, will die. Sooner than I’d hoped but, well. What a drag. Can’t wish for too much, can I?”

Kaito frowned. “What can we do?”

“Nothing. She told me – I’ll die, _poof_ , into nothingness, but that isn’t all. I’ll resurrect. It’s _all_ about the soul with them and their spells. I don’t know how or why, but when I come back, I’ll be cursed with _dissatisfaction_.”He dropped the flower to the puddles. “I will always seek. And I will never find.”

There wasn’t any option but to help Len with that search. He liked Gakupo a lot, but a vampire without their sire…that seemed like the definition of being lost. “Seek what?”

“You ask so many questions. Jeez. I’m _supposed_ to not know.” He affected a dramatic voice: “When the strain of my greed runs dry, I’ll be free.” Len shrugged primly and got to his feet. He frowned at the water. “Well, now I’m soaked. Mind; turn around, I’m going to change.”

And that had been the end of the subject. Kaito had helped the staff clean up the glass while he tasted Len’s blood on his lips and further within – swirling in his heart.

Len did die. It was ages afterwards, during his travels across the continent – just never came home. Kaito had sworn upon that empty doorstep that he would find him again. No matter what it took.

And now’s his chance.

A century past Len’s death, after setting down the flowers, Kaito finds Gakupo with the new Len, the little brittle blonde, who turns to see him at the doorway and grins in such a familiar way. The mahogany table stretches long, colourful and steaming with all manners of foods and garnishes. Len is happily at the head.

“You’re just in time for the master’s dinner,” Gakupo says, presenting the heaping table with a flourish.

Kaito smiles; it stings.

**.x.**

He explains it all to Gakupo as the sun melts hot through the parlour curtains. Gakupo knew, of course, that Len was fated to die and return, but back then, Kaito didn’t have the heart to tell him the other aspect of the curse. Kaito has a feeling he knows what Len is searching for but he doesn’t dare mention it.

Gakupo leans back, steepling his long fingers. Kaito’s stomach twists with dread. Gakupo is too smart. Gakupo is going to figure it out.

This is all his fault.

But was Len better off starving himself? Did such a king deserve that pointless, shameful death, at the hand of a body that he did not want?

Kaito licks his lips and says, “So? What do you say?”

“Firstly, I say that I’m offended that Lord Kagamine didn’t tell me.”

“He’d said that he didn’t want you to go making plans. He didn’t think that I was the scheming type. My heart would be in it, but…”

Gakupo nods dismissively. “It’s only important that I know now, when it counts.”

“Right… What’s ‘secondly?’” He hopes Gakupo will propose a plan. He eagerly leans on the table.

Gakupo lifts a carved eyebrow. “ _Secondly_ , I’m offended that _you_ think I don’t see you writhing with guilt. He went from wanting nothing to wanting everything. Shall you explain how you began the second phase of the curse, or will we just pretend it was an accident?”

Kaito laughs shakily. With a huff, Gakupo swings his boots onto the table and crosses the ankles. He leans his head back, purple hair draping off the chair, and closes his eyes. It would seem like he’sgoing to take a nap if not for the stiff steeple of his hands over his stomach.

After a moment, Gakupo enunciates, “I am annoyed with you. But it seems as if the curse was built assuming that you would be stupid enough to feed him.”

Kaito blushes, tracing designs in the table with his thumbnail.

“We defied fate once; we can’t be so lucky as to do it again, I suppose. No matter. What’s done is done, my friend.” Gakupo’s blue eyes peer at him. “We can’t continue feeding him demon’s blood. He is still human, as much as you don’t want him to be, and curse or no curse – this will certainly drive him mad.”

The use of the blameless ‘we’ is comforting. “So what do we do?”

Gakupo closes his eyes again. “We act none the wiser until he remembers who he is and we can discuss. We continue to cook him anything he wants. Perhaps we’ll be lucky and land on something that jogs his memory, considering how much stock Lord Kagamine put in his indulgences. Either way, it makes him happy for the most part. That’s the least we can do. Make him happy.”

“…Yes, you’re right.”

Gakupo smiles dreamily. “Besides, I’m becoming a wonderful cook.”

**.x.**

_“I’m coming home, gentlemen!_

_Before you get too excited, remember that I’m travelling backwards through the North. I know, Gakupo – you said I should avoid this hellish place, but when a troupe of performing vampires asks you to follow, well – you don’t refuse! You can reprimand me all you wish when I get back._

_If the cold doesn’t kill me._

_I’m kidding. A little._

_Food is terrible. Is it possible for blood to literally run cold? Please make me a fire for when I come home. You can burn my library for it. I don’t care._

_Soon, kin, my lovely companions, my home, my blood-brethren. Soon, I promise._

_I will accept all hatred and love at the door.”_

**.x.**

Kaito’s resolve is shaky, but for three months, it holds.

Their life becomes a wildly fluctuating, but blissfully consistent, chain of dramatics. They cook, they feed, they try again. Len is demanding, Len is eating, Len is happy, and then he plummets catastrophically because nothing is enough.

Nothing is enough to keep him occupied, nothing is enough to keep him full.

Nothing is enough to keep him happy.

Kaito helps clean him up when he’s gorged himself ‘til vomiting and says, “I remember when it was so difficult to get you to touch anything more than bread crumbs. Why do you go to this extreme?”

“I want to eat until I’ve had enough,” he says simply. Kaito smiles as kindly as he can. Len’s memories aren’t dislodging from their dark hold.

(He begs the ghost of his sire, when the _hell_ is ‘enough’?!)

And then his resolve crumbles in a single shot. It’s so swift that he realises with guilt that there must have already been a crack there, ready to give in at the slightest push.

Kaito had trotted down the steps into the kitchens, hoping to notify the cooks of a wonderful new idea he’d gotten for dessert that Len is sure to love, when he freezes at the doorway.

The blood is a fresh, deep red, pooling like rainwater over the kitchen floor. Len kneels in it. For a moment Kaito is submerged in a beautiful memory of _his_ Len, the young man of glorious excess, barring the doors of their manor’s ballroom and cutting unwitting guests down in splashes of red and the minor key of screams. In those cases, it was best to die first: it was the last few that he toyed into dances with him, swirling steps dragging with blood from the floors, before he added them to the pile in delicate pieces.

Kaito wrenches this Len to his feet. He’s coughing, red blood spattering down his front, and Kaito stares in horror at the cook: splayed on the floor, a serrated knife spun away, gutted all over the floor as messily as an animal would do. Len wipes his mouth, strings of flesh dragging their way out his mouth.

“Why?” Kaito begs, shaking him by the shoulders. “Why do you - !?”

“I’ll stop when I have enough,” Len says with a strange tinge of conscious wickedness, but his face is human and blood-splattered and sad. He wipes his mouth, and squirms from Kaito’s hands.

**.x.**

The cooks realise that something is terribly wrong with the masters and leave while everyone is resting. Gakupo heads out early the next evening to gather someone else, and Kaito is left managing the leftovers.

But Len will not settle for things he’s already eaten.

He scowls at the array of plates and then lifts the snarl to Kaito. It’s absolutely vicious.

“Why would you give me something so unpleasant?”

“Smile. It’s only for today. Gakupo will come back with _all_ the cooks of the village – then you can have anything you dream of.” Kaito grins warily.

His eyes rove the table, hoping for a garnish or a spilled droplet that he didn’t taste last time, but his scowl deepens. He chews his lip frantically. The words hiss, “I want to stay here. I want to live and eat with you all, but you make it so _hard_. Do you hate me?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why won’t you give me that?” He’s biting the inside of his cheek. “Why won’t you…find it?”

“We’re searching, darling.”

“All searching! Never finding!” Len fumbles to his feet, looking suddenly thin and lost. His eyes are tearing up. Kaito is struck with a guilt for treating this new Len like he wouldn’t treat his real Len – dressing him up and tending to him like something useless. Len took care of him, and this is how he returns the favour?

With such a table but no food to his liking?

He should clean it all away and go to the kitchens himself, make the most glorious food he can for his master. His young master, and his sire all at once. He should dry those tears and –

And keep this all going for another day.

And another. And another.

Kaito gives a bow. “Sir, I’ve just remembered. I have something special for you.”

“Special?” Len looks at him suspiciously, but he slightly calms.

“Yes. The office. Come with me.”

It takes some fighting, but Kaito gets Len to follow him out of the dining room. He doesn’t actually have to leave, but he’s terrified of Gakupo returning home all of a sudden. Kaito ushers Len breathlessly into his office and locks the door. Shuts the curtain. Fumbles for the letter opener with such careless panic that the chest tumbles to the floor and the letters whip around his ankles like a snowstorm.

“Where is it?” Len asks, and Kaito jerkily nods him to the sofa. The upholstery and pillows have long been replaced. Len sits and nothing in his behaviour says that he remembered what last happened here.

Will he know?

Will he taste this and realise that this is what he’s been searching for?

Will nothing satisfy him ever again?

It doesn’t matter. Kaito has everything to offer. He’s a galaxy built for Len.

This might ruin everything, but it doesn’t matter – it _can’t_ matter. He doesn’t want to live in a world where he’s punished for making Len happy.

He slashes open his wrist and a wave of hunger pours over Len’s face. It’s a fierce look that the old Len – real Len – this Len, buried deep inside – saved for the pleasure of stepping into a ballroom of beautiful mortals, in his finest suit with fangs gleaming at his lips.

Kaito backs him into the couch and climbs over him, hardly getting his footing on the cushions before Len yanks his arm to his panting mouth. He’s vicious and needy, pulling desperately at the pulseless veins, blood smearing down his chin. Kaito shoves up his sleeve to help him, bowing over the couch and praying, praying, for the guilt to be drank away as well.

It lasts for mere seconds before Len is scrabbling desperately against his skin. The blood stops.

Kaito pulls his arm away to see the cut shining and clean. When was the last time Kaito drank? This isn’t going to work.

But he can’t just let Len suffer.

The letter opener is still in his fist. He stares, blinded, and without a second thought, drives it into his neck.

Blood splashes down his shoulder and it’s the boy who wrenches the blade out and tosses it to the floor, but it’s a memory that sinks its teeth into his skin.

Centuries ago. He was a shamed nobleman, living for his family, but went to such lengths to hide his true will from them that he often distanced himself into dark corners. He met Len in the bank offices – the least magical way – and drank with him, this incredibly beautiful, charming man. He had a way of throwing the light like a kaleidoscope when he smiled.

Kaito grips the couch as Len lavishes the deep puncture, throwing his arms around Kaito’s neck to drag him ever deeper. Kaito remembers little about his old self, but he remembers the embroidery in the nobleman’s lapel as his scrabbling, confused fingers tried to wrench him off; he remembers the smell of Len’s hair, spilling down his shoulders; he remembers the pull at his hips, the little snicker, the whisper like this was all only a flirtation, _“So, would you like to forgo uselessness...and follow me?”_

Kaito is becoming faint. Len is messy and careless. The tight, heated space between them smells like blood; the phantom sound of Kaito’s throbbing pulse is from Len’s eager suck alone.

_Let me follow you._

_Let me find you._

The deluge runs dry. Len’s hand searches the cushions for the knife, but Kaito threads his fingers through his smaller ones and presses them to Len’s chest. He gives him a gentle push and Len collapses against the back of the couch, pulling Kaito with him. His mouth curls into a grin against his neck.

 “Come back,” he whispers. “Please, come back.”

The boy is full and still beneath him, only offering his faithless prayer a happy purr.

**.x.**

He doesn’t remember.

The next day, Gakupo is none the wiser as he reads a book at the dining table and Len shovels meal after meal in his mouth, hunting desperately for something he cannot find.

The curse will never release him. He drinks, he is poisoned with a demon’s blood, and is happy for just a moment before again he is seeking. And waning.

There…there _has_ to be something Kaito can do to release him.

He hurries back to the blood-drenched office and gathers all the letters from the floor, frantically piecing them together. There has to be some secret in here. Len had sent them after admitting the curse to Kaito, so is it possible that he hid some key?

France, Italy, Spain. The fact that he keeps talking about human food makes Kaito feel sick to his stomach.

His signature. Nameless because Len liked many names for himself, but always the same referral to Gakupo and Kaito.

_My kin, my blood-brethren._

_“When the strain of my greed runs dry, I’ll be free.”_

**.x.**

And here they find themselves, the dusk after the elk. Kaito dared not tell Gakupo what he’s discovered – and even besides, he’s desperately hoping that he’s wrong. Gakupo would puzzle it out. He’d give him a definitive conclusion.

Has fate given them this perfect second chance?

The scene is set.

The curtain rises.


	3. Chapter 3

Len (as he’s come to call himself – his real name is buried under ash) leans against the railing of their box. He’s in a prim suit today; he and Kaito were lucky enough to be caught in a storm on the way to the theatre so Kaito didn’t have to worry about sun parasols or shadowed awnings. Sure, his cuffs are a little wet, but it’s worth it.

Gakupo used to take Len to plays. Grand things with hour after hour of monologues and artful dressings of love and war, all in miniature on the stage. At first he’d been tolerant of the farces, but now, he likes them a lot.

He hangs on every word and sometimes, poignant lines will echo in his mind for hours after. Things will resonate with him and he isn’t sure why. He wants to crawl from this chair and join the actors, embody someone else for a while.

It’s almost an itch. The dramatics are delicious, but not enough to make him cry. The music is heart-rending, but not enough to make him understand. The tales, riveting –but his heart doesn’t race.

Kaito beside him, tonight he watches as the court scheme about the king in his iron crown. Len grips the railing. Have they taken him to this one before? Maybe back when he was exhausted and unappreciative? No, that doesn’t seem right. But he swears he’s heard these lines before. Kaito keeps trying to hand him the little binoculars, but seeing it all like through a bottle makes it so much worse. He needs it in clarity. He needs it right next to him. If he was a _part_ of it –

Kaito grabs the back of his jacket and eases him back to his seat. “Careful.”

Len stares wide-eyed at the king. Yes, he knows the next line – _that hand shall burn in never-quenching fire_ – and a pang of exhilaration stabs through him.

It’s nearly overwhelming. ( _that staggers thus)_ Len realises he’s clutching his chest; he carefully pulls his hand away. The moment was so sweet and yet it’s gone. He tries to retrieve it.

A step ahead of the actor: _Exton, thy fierce hand hath with the King’s blood stained the King’s own land._

And he feels himself rise to his feet but Kaito doesn’t grip him; in fact, he looks back and finds himself firmly sitting, but the illusion is crystal clear.

A man still young and vibrant, spreading his hands on the banister, and growing in volume alongside the actor: “ _Mount, mount, my soul. Thy seat is up on high_ – “

Heads turn to him and a vicious lighting-bright thrill runs through his body. This whole theatre is _his._ He’s seen this play a million times and it’s almost a shame to cut it so soon, but the poetic irony is irresistible.

_“Whilst my flesh sinks downward, here to die.”_

The illusion grows, and grows, and –

Snaps off, like a flower cut before its full bloom.

Len whips around. Kaito gives him a soft smile, an indication that nothing was wrong; he hadn’t uttered a single word. On stage, he hears the collapse of the king.

**.x.**

Afterwards, they sit in the lobby with gold wallpaper and roses and wait for the crowds to pass. People mill about or step into carriages with footmen keeping their skirt hems out of puddles. Kaito is sniffing the air as subtly as he can.

Eventually a beautiful woman in an olive dress passes and Kaito stands. His gaze latches on her as she tarries near the exit, laughing with a friend before they part ways.

“Will you kill her?” Len asks.

Kaito sighs. “I hate to do this around you.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I’ll only be a minute. How about you wait here, where it’s warm? I don’t want to trouble you.”

Len stares at him until Kaito smiles, trying to tamp down a strange guilt that appears clear as day on his face. Len rolls his eyes.

Kaito plucks a rose from a nearby vase. He offers it with all the theatrics of the performers– this time, Len really does smile as he takes the flower. He’s fingering the petals when Kaito vanishes out the door into the rain, chasing the woman’s footsteps.

The rose is satiny between his fingertips. Kaito likes to decorate his room with them and he won’t mention it, but he likes them quite a lot. The smell, like perfume and fresh dew. The butterflies it attracts from the open window, where he likes to sit in the sun – all the other windows in the manor only open to show the bare, silvery face of the moon. The flowers…like the plays, they remind him of something.

He lifts the rose to smell it, and the outer petals touch his mouth. Yes, this is familiar as well. When…?

_Mount, mount, my soul…_

He’s struck with a sudden anger at not reaching that peak. Of not feeling _everything_. It was right **_there_**! Why did it steal away from him!? It’s not the lack of sensation that’s the worst part, but the mystery is horribly worse: like there’s a world out of his grasp that everyone feels but him. That everyone loves, and thrives in, and enjoys, but him. The anger stabs through him with a very real pain.

He imagines glass in his hands. The anger wrenches in his chest. The room smells overpoweringly of flowers.

There’s a pulse outside him. His fingers dig in warm, yielding flesh, so unlike the icy touch of the masters of the house.

_You want mercy, or else you’ll…what? You cannot further damn what is already damned. There’s only one place for me to go._

Like the recitations of the play, he can feel the words. The lobby swims beneath him.

_What’s one more curse to the eternally cursed? Don’t be silly, witch. Isn’t it just like me to go back for…what is it now…fourths?_

**_You_ ** _decided this. If I’m doomed to never feel again, then you can’t possibly be surprised that I’d try all I can to **feel** all I can, before the time comes?_

_And look at this. I’m feeling **bored.**_

Someone touches his arm. Len jerks out of the memory, the flower falling between his feet.

He peers up at the stranger, who asks from a great distance, “Are you alright, sir? You look ill.”

In perfect clarity he recalls wrenching bone, shredding skin, the hot flood of blood down his throat.

_When I die, I won’t be alone. And when I return, I won’t be alone. Fate them to orchestrate my curse, why don’t you? We’ll always find our way back together._

The floor swings up to meet him.

**.x.**

"Ash, my friend. Utterly ash."

Kaito stares at Gakupo wiping his hands off on his handkerchief. The lavender fabric smears with a wet black like charcoal.

"Is he all right?" Kaito asks warily. There’s a deep, unfamiliar sickness curdling inside him, making wonderful friends with the sourness of his long-standing guilt.

Gakupo continues to clean his fingers of the tainted blood. Len had passed out, that's all - there was no damage that drew blood, so Kaito imagines that Gakupo had cut him with a suspicion that was quickly proved right.

"I'm so sorry, Gakupo, I - "

Gakupo slaps the handkerchief onto the table. He enunciates thickly, "Enough with your apologies. They mean nothing if you do not mend your ways. I warned you.”

"I know, but he suffers - "

"So you make him suffer more?!" Gakupo pierces him with a searing glare. "You see him as something divine. He is not."

"I know he's human."

"Even as a vampire!" Gakupo shouts, making Kaito huddle in his chair. "Did he not hunger like a man? Did he not thirst? Did he not _die_?! He is impermanent! If you kill this body, he will not become your guardian angel! He will leave us alone again."

Alone. Rotting in this dreaded manor all alone, without the memory, without the curse's promise to keep them going. Kaito licks his lips and stares at the floor.

He hears himself whisper, "The rest of the curse - it's us."

The storm to Gakupo quiets. "What?"

"He said that once his strain - once the evidence of his greed ended, he would stop suffering."

"We are his children."

"Yes."

"So we must..." Gakupo looks off to Len's closed door. Kaito can't bear to say it; neither can Gakupo, even with his sterile tone.

_Die. We have to die._

"Then he will be happy again."

Kaito whispers, "I'm so scared of leaving him alone. What if he never remembers? What if he withers away here, with no idea of the - the man he once was?"

Gakupo's gaze slides to Kaito. Gakupo never offers much in the way of warmth, but in his eyes is now an incredible depth of feeling.

"I do not wish to live without him either." Gakupo lifts his chin to the door with a patient slowness and says, "He asks for you. Give him comfort while you can."

**.x.**

Kaito bolsters himself at the door so he can step in with a smile. Len is curled up in bed, watching the polish on his nails warp in a solitary stream of sunlight. Kaito steps around it and sits on the other side of the bed.

"Why didn't you mention that you were sick?"

Len closes his hand. He says quietly, "I thought you wanted me to be ill.”

Kaito carefully reaches out; Len is still as he touches his hair. He has no response for that. The truth is too hard to piece apart from the lie. An apology scorches uselessly at his lips.

Len whispers, "At the theatre, I felt as if I was remembering a memory that wasn't mine. It was strange, like a dream coming back. Is that a part of this?"

Kaito feels as if he's been pierced with a dagger of ice. "Remembering...? Do you - now, do you still know what you saw?"

Len's light eyebrows drive together. In this moment, Kaito sees so much of him. How did he miss it? The curve to his lips, the endless, cold blue of his eyes. His family is in there, closer to the surface than ever. What will he say to Kaito once he surfaces?

Len says slowly, "Mount. Mount, my soul. Thy seat is up on high."

It's all wrong, and yet exactly as he'd wanted. Len had loved plays. He could recite the entirety of sonnets, purring them in Kaito's ear while the sun streamed hot, just out of reach on the sheets. He'd had centuries to learn them all. He'd return from other countries and pull Kaito and Gakupo to the ballroom to recite them out like a child playing with dolls - he knew every line, and sometimes promised that he'd been sure to make it that he was the only one that night who would remember that performance. And then he shared it with them. Their secret theatre, just the three of them.

Kaito smiles exhaustedly and strokes his thumb on Len's cheekbone. Maybe they're closer than he thought to the truth.

But would he be able to stand it? His Len, not this slave-boy, the young man who had feasted on food and flesh and sex and pain... Would Kaito stand to see him hurting?

This...this wanting, it isn't _living_ for anyone. Especially not for Len, who took such complete, great pleasure in all.

No, there's no way...Kaito _couldn't_ die, because what if it didn't work? What if Len had other fledglings all over the world and the curse persisted? What if Kaito died and left Len to endlessly suffer _alone_?

"Kaito..."

He lurches to attention, and his voice is shaky: "Yes, Len?"

He's returned to looking at his fingers in the light. Len as a human...it's so wrong. He murmurs with a little whine, "Can you get me something to eat?"

Kaito swallows thickly. He leans down and kisses Len on the temple, trying to not hear the slow, laboured heartbeat therein.

"...Yes. Whatever you want."

**.x.**

_Let us be together, my friends._

_Let us fête together. Let us dine together. Let us live together._

_Until Hell itself tires of our greed, and comes to swallow us up._

**.x.**

Len takes his seat at the head of the table.

It's a couple nights later, and rest has done him well, but he feels like he doesn't remember good health enough to even compare.

Kaito and Gakupo are at his sides. Tonight’s feast is grand to celebrate his newfound strength: everything from _foie gras_ to wine-drenched caviar.

"Before we begin," Gakupo says, lifting from his chair with glass in hand, "I would like to speak."

He effortlessly makes an impressive figure; tall and stately like a pediment statue, the glass held out in his long slender fingers. His dark eyes linger on Kaito’s for a decisive moment.

"As demons of the dark," Gakupo begins in a heavy voice, "we do not often think of where we began. But all has a beginning, even infinity."

Kaito watches his companion curiously, uncharacteristically still.

"We began as humans. Born to die, as all must. To take pleasure in the earth before our time is done. I did not." He briefly shuts his eyes in the depths of the memory. "I was a man lost to routine and despair. I had no riches. I had no love. I wasted all that life gave me. But when fate came calling, another figure swept between us, brandishing a blade."

Kaito gets it now; Len doesn’t. Kaito’s face brightens, as if Gakupo said that they were serving his favourite dessert.

"This defiant figure sits with us now."

Len frowns. No one moves.

" I thought fate had _forgotten_ to take me, thanks to him…but it seems she was only very, very patient, and very calculating." His eyes flash in a way that makes Len feel a flicker of that fear he had when they first tore upon him in the flaming cellar. " My allegiance is to my saviour. As he once saved me from fate, I will save him from doom."

A sweep of darkness comes over him, a blazing sort that shines like obsidian beneath his pale skin, in his eyes where the red cross flares. A breathlessness takes him over and his lips part around the bladed fangs in his smile.

Kaito grips the table, whispering, "Gakupo, what are you - ?"

Gakupo takes a gulp of his wine and gently sets the glass on the table. He smiles softly. "I am so sorry, my friend. But you truly are the heart of the three of us. There is no way that you would have the strength to do this."

Kaito scrambles to his feet and backs up a few paces. There is the fangs, the wildness, that initially terrified Len so.

Gakupo says, "Would you want him to know that we let this chance slip through our fingers because of fear?”

As they lock eyes, something unheard passes between them. Something that makes Kaito relax, just a tiny bit, in ways that Len suddenly knows how to look for: his hands, the set in his jaw. Kaito looks at Len and there is pain.

As this all happens, Len feels strangely empty. It's as if he feels a great stirring beneath his skin but it only surfaces in a dull static. He stares blankly back.

Kaito's gaze is wrenched from him as Gakupo lunges gracefully across the table and grabs Kaito about the throat. They battle briefly with a strange silence, tight together. Len can hear his heart beat. Some of his blood must still run black.

Gakupo turns to him, ignoring Kaito clawing at his choking hand, and flourishes his free arm over the immense array of food. "Won't you eat, my master? This will be brief."

Len notices that those soulless eyes shine with tears.

A chair smashes into splinters. It's all happening so fast that Len can't keep up, only sees flashes of their dark clothing and illuminated eyes like sharply-carved gemstones, like demons tearing their ways out of shadows. Something within Len flickers awake. Whatever it is, it sees the spray of black ink as Gakupo tears off Kaito's jaw and it _wails_.

Len throws himself to his feet and a yell tears its way out. It cannot be _his_ agony. It's from whoever is inside, whoever is beyond, who reaches desperately for Kaito -

Gakupo pushes Len away. His arm arcs up, holding a splintered stake of the wooden chair, but Len hits the floor with a cry that breaks Gakupo's focus and the plummet stops.

He goes completely still.

He looks down at Kaito, who looks his most demonic in fear. He's half-lifted on his elbows, the red flaring in his eyes, the empty, pouring gape of his jaw seemingly not hurting him at all. His stare is begging and wild at Gakupo.

Gakupo's grip falters. He says with a voice unexpectedly weak, "Look to him, my friend. For Len, you will do anything. You know what that entails. Do not let your fear strangle the power of your love."

Kaito squeezes his eyes shut, choking down tears that rattle in his blood-drenched chest.

"Look to him!"

And finally he does. Whatever is inside Len breaks the surface with a cry, and a flood of memories wash over him - the nobleman, the warm darkness, the scent of his skin, the roses. A laugh. A confession. And a masked plea.

Len whispers to Kaito, " I gave you something so precious - I gave you life. Now give me something precious of your own. Don't you want to atone?"

Kaito's eyes overflow with tears. He cannot speak, but Len feels as if he knows the answer he wants to give. Kaito holds out a hand to Gakupo and the vampire helps him to his feet.

Len watches with a disjointed fondness as they briefly hug. Brief, but full of a feeling that cannot be put to words - all they had was silence and time. All they had were each other, because he left them, didn't he? He got himself killed - not even in an incredible way, just a staking, something foolish that he doesn’t want the world to know. Doesn’t want his men to know, anyways. He'd left them alone for something stupid, and he's suddenly incredibly proud to see this house and to have seen their joy and their dedication and their creativity. The food! The music! Ingredients from all over the world! _You knew I was here all along, didn't you?_

There's a soft crunch as Gakupo drives the stake into Kaito's heart.

He crumples to the floor.

_You knew I was here, and waited for me._

_And I'll be free._

_I'll be free._

_…Hah._

Gakupo sweeps a low bow to Len and smiles.

Len whispers, "I knew you'd do something like this. This is why I didn’t tell you."

Gakupo chuckles. He picks some splinters off the stake and says, "Live well, my king. Find joy." And he pierces his own heart.

Len crawls back to his feet; this body is strangely delicate and weak, but it is buoyed by an incredible reverence that fills the room with something stronger than holy. A laugh bubbles to his lips. So he's alone, then? So he's nothing?

He looks over the table. Steam curls in the air, hot and dewy when he runs his hands over the meats and sauces and pies. He breathes deep - ah, he _needs_ to breathe.

God. Why did he have to wake up _now_? Is this part of the curse as well? He'd give anything to have those months back as himself, not this - not this petulant child.

Those months with his men. With his family. He misses them, but this body is drenched in careless coldness.

Wonderful.

He can't even feel completely sad.

He picks up a fork from the table, angling it in the light.

There's a definite ache in his chest. What else would he ever want? They're gone. He'd comforted himself in loss and death that they would be searching for him no matter what happened, but now...

And he's still cursed.

There's one more droplet of cursed blood in this. But the curse promised that there was a time to be freed, after all was cleansed from him, after his filthy blood atoned. That time is probably the afterlife. How simply sweet.

Len glares down the array of food. Fit for a king. He picks a little from each of the plates, and they give him fleeting pleasure, but as soon as he swallows the memory of the taste and feeling are burned up like parchment.

One more strain of blood.

They can't die for nothing, and yet all this human body can give him is _nothing_.

Len sits. Rests his head on the back of the chair, tilting his chin up comfortably. He can feel himself swallow. He highly doubts it’s heaven waiting for him, but at least Hell will make more creative tortures than a witch can.

He holds the fork at arm's length and stares down the shining, alluring curve of it.

He can't even feel truly scared...or maybe he's just that much of a monster.

He drives the fork into his throat.

**.x.**

Len gasps back into consciousness, finding himself resting peacefully in the chair.

It hits him like a bullet: he's shaking.

He's hungry.

He scrambles up to grab the nearest plate of food. But before he's even brought the ash to his mouth, he knows this isn't what he craves. Kaito had fed him his blood – god damn it all, of course. Death gave him passage to the darkness, to losing the soul he didn't realise he still had.

Fool. That perfect, desperate fool.

He can feel the fangs in his mouth. The bodies of his brethren lay crumpled on the floor, their blood drying black, reeking with the fading heat of demons. It’s incredibly sweet.

Can he feel at all?

The only way to find out is to indulge until he can no longer.

Len bares the comforting weight of his fangs. Slides purposefully off his chair towards his men.

And he _wants_.

 


End file.
